Supernova

Chapter Eighty - Down the Mountain

A/N: well, here we are...our last SHA chapter. Kind of bittersweet, no? No? Alright. Well, I'll certainly miss the ominous rich kid prison of my own creation. 

We've also reached the point where updates will now be only once a week. Which is probably great news for those of you who read each chapter as they come out AND for me who's basically spending every free minute writing about dumb gay soccer players and NOT finishing this story. 

& as always, thanks for sticking with me and the gremlins thus far. 

The trip down the mountain was, in a word, horrendous.

The first few hours, I was just running on pure adrenaline. I was sliding down snowbanks and weaving around trees like nobody's business. It wasn't an unfamiliar terrain, and although it was a steep and unforgiving one, there was no fall that I couldn't survive, and there was no avalanche that I couldn't outrun. A near death experience will have you feeling that way.

But I did eventually tire. I found a little patch of flat mountainside that seemed safe enough. It was covered enough to protect me from avalanches. Not that being buried or frostbite was much of an issue, but if I was buried and wasn't able to see my hands, that would be. I curled up on the ground with my back to the rock. After God only knows how many hours of running, stillness triggered tears in me. It also triggered a horrified sense of awareness. And loneliness. I ripped a few branches off the nearby trees, pulled them into my chest, and sobbed into them until I finally fell asleep.

I woke up and it was lighter out. I heard birds. It made me feel less alone.

The branches had become mangled in my sleep. Much like my dress had been on the trip so far. Not that I could have made any other one, but it felt a very stupid choice of clothing to be trekking down a mountain in. The bodice was more or less intact, so I ripped away what was left of the tattered sleeves and tied the mutilated shards of the skirt between my legs until it was kind of shorts. I tied my long hair in a knot to keep it out of my face. Not the best explorers' garments, but they'd have to do. I wished I had my Nova costume.

But forget about it. It was long gone. The costume, like everyone and everything else I'd left at The Academy, was something I would never see again.

As soon as I moved the stand, the metal taste was upon me so fast, I barely had time to lean forward and before the blood came to sully the snow. These splashes were thick and vibrant, and worse than that, desperate. I supposed I had been doing more activity than usual over the course of the night. I'd have to find some food. Luckily for me, the fact that I wasn't in walking distance of my fridge at the SHA, didn't have my credit cards, and couldn't cook posed no threat to me. This was the wild and I was indestructible. I knew how to survive here.

Sorry, birds.

I sat on one of the thicker tree branches as I ate them. Whole. Feathers and bones and all. This was no time to be wasteful. I ate their nest too. I didn't know how much nutrition twigs and scraps of bark had, but if nothing else, it would give my demanding body something to do while I waited to stumble upon a fox or deer or something. Once I was finished and convinced it would be a while until the next blood came, I told myself time was of the essence, so I hopped down, cleaned my bloody hands in the snow, and trekked on.

I made it a decent way, or I thought so anyways, without a compass or map or any real sense of direction besides down, that first day, but then I heard the blades of a helicopter. Panic ripped through me. I buried myself in the snow, crumpled up so I could see my hands and feet, and waited for it to pass. Which it did. But it terrified the fucking shit out of me so bad that I skidded on down to the closest forested area and waited there, breathing heavy and covered in tree branches, until night fell.